Chapter XXV (2)

This instruction, which is the “main reason” for retaining Confession, is to be followed, according to the same letter, by “the _Absolutio_” pronounced by the preacher in God’s stead, i.e. by the word of the confessor which may “comfort the heart and confirm it in the faith.” Of this same word Luther says: “Who is there who has climbed so high as to be able to dispense with or to despise God’s Word?”[851]

It is in the light of such explanations that we must appreciate the fine things in praise of Confession, so frequently quoted, which Luther says in his letter to Frankfurt.

Luther goes on to make an admission which certainly does him honour: “And for this [the consolation and strength it affords] I myself stand most in need of Confession, and neither will nor can do without it; for it has given me, and still gives me daily, great comfort when I am sad and in trouble. But the fanatics, because they trust in themselves and are unacquainted with sadness, are ready to despise this medicine and solace.”

He had already said: “If thousands and thousands of worlds were mine, I should still prefer to lose everything rather than that one little bit of this Confession should be lost to the churches. Nay, I would prefer the Popish tyranny, with its feasts, fasts, vestments, holy places, tonsures, cowls and whatever I might bear without damage to the faith, rather than that Christians should be deprived of Confession. For it is the Christian’s first, most necessary and useful school, where he learns to understand and to practise God’s Word and his faith, which cannot be so thoroughly done in public lectures and sermons.”[852]

“Christians are not to be deprived of Confession.” On this, and for the same reasons, Luther had already insisted in the booklet on Confession he had published in 1529. The booklet first appeared as an appendix to an edition of his Greater Catechism published in that year, and is little more than an amended version of Rörer’s notes of his Palm Sunday sermon in 1529.[853]

In this booklet on Confession, also entitled “A Short Exhortation to Confession,”[854] he says of the “secret Confession made to a brother alone”: “Where there is something special that oppresses or troubles us, worries us and will give us no rest, or if we find ourselves halting in our faith,” we should “complain of this to a brother and seek counsel, consolation and strength.” “Where a heart feels its sinfulness and is desirous of comfort, it has here a sure refuge where it may find and hear God’s Word.” “Whoever is a Christian, or wishes to become one, is hereby given the good advice to go and fetch the precious treasure.” “Thus we teach now what an excellent, costly and consoling thing Confession is, and admonish all not to despise so fine a possession.” As the “parched and hunted hart” panteth after the fountains, so ought our soul to pant after “God’s Word or Absolution.”--The zeal expected of the penitent is well described, but here, as is so often the case with Luther, we again find the mistake resulting from his false idealism, viz. that, after doing away with all obligation properly so called, personal fervour and the faith he preached would continue to supply the needful.

Before Luther’s day Confession had been extolled on higher grounds than merely on account of the comfort and instruction it afforded. It had been recognised as a true Sacrament instituted by Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and committed by Him with the words “Whose sins you shall forgive,” etc. (John xx. 22 f.), to the exercise of duly appointed ministers. Yet the earlier religious literature had not been behindhand in pointing out how great a boon it was for the human heart to be able to pour its troubles into the ears of a wise and kindly guide, who could impart a true absolution and pour the balm of consolation and the light of instruction into the soul kneeling humbly before him as God’s own representative.

As regards the instruction, on which Luther lays such stress as the “main reason” for retaining the practice, the Catholic Confession handbooks of that period, particularly some recently re-edited, show how careful the Church was about this matter.

Franz Falk has recently made public three such handbooks, of which very few copies were hitherto known.[855] One of these is the work of a priest of Frankfurt a. M., Magister Johann Wolff (Lupi), and was first published in 1478; the second is a block-book containing a preparation for Confession, probably printed at Nuremberg in 1475; the third an Augsburg manual of Confession printed in 1504. The last two were intended more for popular use and give the sins in the order of the Decalogue. The first, by Wolff, pastor of St. Peter’s at Frankfurt, consists of two parts, one for children, the other for “older people, learned or unlearned,” containing examinations of conscience, very detailed and explicit in some parts, into the sins against the Ten Commandments, the seven capital sins, and, finally, the sins committed with “the five outward senses.” The examination of conscience for children, for the sake of instruction also includes the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed and Decalogue, also the list of capital sins, Sacraments and Eight Beatitudes. The copious Latin tags from Peter Lombard, Scotus, Gerson, etc., point to the manual having been meant primarily as a guide for the clergy, on whom an appendix also impresses the advantages of a frequent explanation of the Ten Commandments from the pulpit. Schoolmasters too, so the manual says, should also be urged to instruct on the Commandments those committed to their care. Luther’s manual on Confession contains so many echoes of Wolff’s work (or of other Catholic penitential handbooks) that one of Wolff’s Protestant editors remarks: “Such agreement is certainly more than a mere chance coincidence,” and, further: “It is difficult in view of the great resemblance of thought, and in places even of language, not to assume that the younger man is indebted to his predecessor.”[856] However this may be, Wolff’s work, though holding no very high place as regards either arrangement or style, clearly expresses the general trend of the Catholic teaching on morality at that time, and refutes anew the unfounded charge that religious instruction for the people was entirely absent.

“We see how mature and keen in many particulars was the moral sense in that much-abused period.... The author is not satisfied with merely an outward, pharisaical righteousness, but the spirit is what he everywhere insists on.... He also defines righteousness ... as absolute uprightness of spirit, thankful, devoted love of God and pure charity towards our neighbour, free from all ulterior motive.” These words, of the “Leipziger Zeitung” (“Wissenschaftliche Beilage,” No. 10, 1896), regarding the Leipzig “Beichtspiegel” of 1495, Falk applies equally to Wolff’s handbook for Confession.[857]

This latter instruction dwells particularly on the need of “contrition, sorrow and grief for sin” on the part of the penitent. N. Paulus, in several articles, has furnished superabundant proof, that in those years, which some would have us believe were addicted to the crassest externalism, the need of contrition in Confession was earnestly dwelt upon in German religious writings.[858]

Luther, however, even in the early days of his change, under the influence of a certain distaste and prejudice in favour of his own pet ideas, had conceived an aversion for Confession. Here again his opposition was based on purely personal, psychological grounds. The terrors he had endured in Confession owing to his curious mental constitution, his enmity to all so-called holiness-by-works--leading him to undervalue the Church’s ancient institution of Confession--and the steadily growing influence of his prejudices and polemics, alone explain how he descended so often to the most odious and untrue misrepresentations of Confession as practised by the Papists.

What in the depths of his heart he really desired, and what he openly called for, viz. a Confession which should heal the wounds of the soul and, by an enlightened faith, promote moral betterment--that, alas, he himself had destroyed with a violent hand.

In his letter to Frankfurt quoted above he abuses the Catholic system of Confession because it requires the admission of all mortal sins, and calls it “a great and everlasting martyrdom,” “trumped up as a good work whereby God may be placated.” He calumniates the Catholic past by declaring it did nothing but “count up sins” and that “the insufferable burden, and the impossibility of obeying the Papal law caused such fear and distress to timorous souls that they were driven to despair.” And, in order that the most odious charge may not be wanting, he concludes: “This brought in money and goods, so that it became an idol throughout the whole world, but it was no doctrine, examination or exercise leading to the confession and acknowledgment of Christ.”[859] The fables which he bolstered up on certain abuses, of which even the Papal penitentiary was guilty, were only too readily believed by the masses.[860]

_Church Music._

In order to enliven the church services Luther greatly favoured congregational singing. Of his important and successful labours in this direction we shall merely say here, that he himself composed canticles instinct with melody and force, which were either set to music by others or sung to olden Catholic tunes, and became hugely popular among Protestants, chiefly because their wording expresses so well the feelings of the assembled congregation. One of Luther’s Hymnbooks, with twenty-four hymns composed by himself, appeared in 1524.[861]

Music, particularly religious music, he loved and cherished, yielding himself entirely to the enjoyment of its inspiring and ennobling influence. As a schoolboy he had earned his bread by singing; at the University he delighted his comrades by his playing on the lute; later he never willingly relinquished music, and took care that the hours of recreation should be gladdened by the singing of various motets.[862] Music, he said, dispelled sad thoughts and was a marvellous cure for melancholy. In his Table-Talk he describes the moral influence of music in language truly striking.[863] “My heart overflows and expands to music; it has so often refreshed and delivered me amidst the worst troubles,” thus to the musician Senfl at Munich when asking him to compose a motet.[864] He supplied an Introduction in the shape of a poem entitled “Dame Music” to Johann Walther’s “The Praise and Prize of the lovely art of Music” (1538). It commences:[865] There can be no ill-will here--Where all sing with voices clear--Hate or envy, wrath or rage,--When sweet strains our minds engage. Being himself conversant with musical composition, he took pleasure in Walther’s description of counterpoint and in his ingenious comparison of the sequence of melodies to a troop of boys at play.

Grauert admirably groups together “Luther’s poetic talent, the gift of language, which enabled him so to master German, his work for German hymnology, his enthusiastic love of music, of which he well knew the importance as a moral factor, and his familiarity with the higher forms of polyphonic composition.” He also remarks quite rightly that these favourable traits had been admitted unreservedly by Johannes Janssen.[866]

2. Emotional Character and Intellectual Gifts

The traits mentioned above could hardly be duly appreciated unless we also took into account certain natural qualities in Luther from which his depth of feeling sprang.

A Catholic has recently called him an “emotional man,” and, so far as thereby his great gifts of intellect and will are not called into question, the description may be allowed to stand.[867] Especially is this apparent in his peculiar humour, which cannot fail to charm by its freshness and spontaneity all who know his writings and his Table-Talk, even though his witticisms quite clearly often served to screen his bitter vexation, or to help him to react against depression, and were frequently disfigured by obscenity and malice.[868] It is a more grateful task to observe the deep feeling expressed in his popular treatment of religious topics. Johannes Janssen declares that he finds in him “more than once a depth of religious grasp which reminds one of the days of German mysticism,”[869] while George Evers, in a work otherwise hostile to Luther, admits: “We must acknowledge that a truly Christian credulity peeps out everywhere, and, particularly in the Table-Talk, is so simple and childlike as to appeal to every heart.” Evers even adds: “His religious life as pictured there gives the impression of a man of prayer.”[870]

The circumstantial and reliable account given by Johann Cochlæus of an interview which he had with Luther at Worms in 1521 gives us a certain glimpse into the latter’s feelings at that critical juncture. After holding a lengthy disputation together, the pair withdrew into another room where Cochlæus implored his opponent to admit his errors and to make an end of the scandal he was giving to souls. Both were so much moved that the tears came to their eyes. “I call God to witness,” writes Cochlæus, “that I spoke to him faithfully and with absolute conviction.” He pointed out to him as a friend how willing the Pope and all his opponents were to forgive him; he was perfectly ready to admit and condemn the abuses in connection with the indulgences against which Luther had protested; his religious apostasy and the revolt of the peasants whom he was leading astray were, however, a different matter. The matter was frankly discussed between the two, partly in German, partly in Latin. Luther finally mastered the storm obviously raging within and brought the conversation to an end by stating that it did not rest with him to undo what had been done, and that greater and more learned men than he were behind it. On bidding him farewell, Cochlæus assured him with honest regret that he would continue the literary feud; Luther, for his part, promised to answer him vigorously.[871]

Luther’s mental endowments were great and unique.

Nature had bestowed on him such mental gifts as must astonish all, the more they study his personality. His extraordinary success was due in great part to these rare qualities, which were certainly calculated to make of him a man truly illustrious had he not abused them. His lively reason, quick grasp and ready tongue, his mind, so well stocked with ideas, and, particularly, the inexhaustible fertility of his imagination, allowing him to express himself with such ease and originality, enchanted all who came into contact with him.

Pollich of Mellerstadt, one of the most highly respected Professors of the Wittenberg University, said of Luther, when as yet the latter was scarcely known: “Keep an eye on that young monk, Master Martin Luther, he has a reason so fine and keen as I have not come across in all my life; he will certainly become a man of eminence.”[872] Jonas, his friend, assures us that others too, amongst them Lang and Staupitz, admitted they had never known a man of such extraordinary talent.[873] Urban Rhegius, who visited him in 1534, in the report he gives shows himself quite overpowered by Luther’s mind and talent: “He is a theologian such as we rarely meet. I have always thought much of Luther, but now I think of him more highly than ever. For now I have seen and heard what cannot be explained in writing to anyone not present.... I will tell you how I feel. It is true we all of us write occasionally and expound the Scriptures, but, compared with Luther, we are children and mere schoolboys.”[874]

His friends generally stood in a certain awe of his greatness, though, in their case, we can account otherwise for their admiration. Later writers too, even amongst the Catholics, felt in the imposing language of his writings the working of a powerful mind, much as they regretted his abuse of his gifts. “His mind was both sharp and active,” such was the opinion of Sforza Pallavicini, the Jesuit author of a famous history of the Council of Trent; “he was made for learned studies and pursued them without fatigue to either mind or body. His learning seemed his greatest possession, and this he was wont to display in his discourse. In him felicity of expression was united with a stormy energy. Thereby he won the applause of those who trust more to appearance than to reality. His talents filled him with a self-reliance which the respect shown him by the masses only intensified.”[875] “Luther’s mind was a fertile one,” he writes elsewhere, “but its fruits were more often sour than ripe, more often abortions of a giant than viable offspring.”[876] His alert and too-prolific fancy even endangered his other gifts by putting in the shade his real intellectual endowments. “His imagination,” Albert Weiss truly says, “was, next to his will, the most strongly developed of his inner faculties, and as powerful as it was clear. Herein chiefly lies the secret of his power of language.”[877]

To his temperamental and intellectual qualities, which undoubtedly stamped his works with the impress of a “giant,” we must add his obstinate strength of will and his extraordinary tenacity of purpose.

Were it possible to separate his will from his aims and means, and to appreciate it apart, then one could scarcely rate it high enough. Thousands, even of the bravest, would have quailed before the difficulties he had to face both without and within his camp. The secret of his success lay simply in his ability to rise superior to every difficulty, thanks to his defiance and power of will. Humanly it is hard to understand how all attacks and defeats only served to embolden him. Protestants have spoken of the “demoniacal greatness” manifest in Luther, have called him a man of “huge proportions and power” in whose “breast two worlds wrestled,” and, on account of his “heroic character,” have even claimed that history should overlook “the vices proper to heroes.”[878]

Among Catholic writers the earlier Döllinger, for all his aversion for Luther’s purpose and the weapons he employed, nevertheless says of him: “If such a one is justly to be styled a great man, who, thanks to his mighty gifts and powers, accomplishes great things and brings millions of minds under his sway--then the son of the peasant of Möhra must be reckoned among the great, yea, among the greatest of men.”[879] Upon the disputed definition of “greatness” we cannot enter here. (See vol. vi., xl., 1.) Yet, in view of the intellectual gifts lavished on Luther, Döllinger’s words are undoubtedly not far away from the mark, particularly when we consider his gigantic capacity for work and the amazing extent of his literary labours, distracted though he was by other cares.

We have already had occasion to give the long list of the works he penned in 1529 and 1530,[880] and we may add some further examples. In 1521, in which year he lost over five weeks in travelling, not to speak of the correspondence and other business which claimed his attention in that exciting period of his life, he still found time to write more than twenty works of varying length which in the Weimar edition cover 985 large octavo pages; he also translated a book by Melanchthon into German, commenced his translation of the Bible and his church Postils. In 1523 he produced no less than twenty-four books and pamphlets, and, besides this, his lectures on Deuteronomy (247 pages in the Weimar edition) and a German translation of the whole Pentateuch. He also preached about 150 sermons, planned other works and wrote the usual flood of letters, of which only a few, viz. 112, have been preserved, amongst them being some practically treatises in themselves and which duly appeared in print. Even in 1545, when already quite broken down in health and when two months were spent in travelling, he managed with a last effort, inspired by his deadly hate, to compose even so considerable a book as his “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,” as well as other smaller writings and the usual number of private letters, circulars, and memoranda.[881] At the very end he told his friend, the preacher Jacob Probst, that he meant to work without intermission though old and weary, with a failing eyesight and a body racked with pain.

These labours, of which the simple enumeration of his books gives us an inkling, even the most fertile mind could have performed only by utilising every moment of his time and by renouncing all the allurements to distraction and repose. The early hours of the morning found Luther regularly in his study, and, in the evening, after his conversation with his friends, he was wont to betake himself early to bed so as to be able to enjoy that good sleep, without which, he declared, he could not meet the demands made upon him.

That, however, behind all his fiery zeal for work, certain moral influences not of the highest also had a share is obvious from what has been said previously.

3. Intercourse with Friends. The Interior of the former Augustinian Monastery

Hitherto we have been considering the favourable traits in Luther’s character as a public man; turning to his quieter life at Wittenberg, we shall find no lack of similar evidences.[882] We must begin by asking impartially whether the notorious Table-Talk does not reveal a better side of his character.

The question must be answered in the affirmative by every unprejudiced reader of those notes. Luther’s gifts of mind and temperament, his versatility, liveliness of imagination, easy use of Scripture and insight even into worldly matters; further his rare talent of simple narration, and not seldom the very subjects he chooses give a real worth to Luther’s Table-Talk, notwithstanding all that may be urged against it. It is accordingly the historian’s duty faithfully to portray its better side.

_The more favourable side of the Table-Talk._

Any comprehensive judgment on the Table-Talk as a whole is out of the question; with its changing forms and colours and its treatment of the subjects it is altogether too kaleidoscopic. Again, in conjunction with what is good and attractive, frivolous, nay, even offensive and objectionable subjects are dealt with, for which the reader is in no wise prepared.[883]

It is necessary to emphasise the fact--which may be new to some--that to regard the Table-Talk as a hotch-potch of foul sayings is to do it an injustice. Catholics, as a matter of course, are used to finding in anti-Lutheran polemics plentiful quotations from it not at all to Luther’s credit; of its better contents, a knowledge of which is of even greater importance in forming an opinion of his character, no hint is contained in this sort of literature. Some are even ignorant that Protestant writers have more than compensated for this undue stress on the unfavourable side of the Table-Talk by the attractive selection they give from its finer parts.

In point of fact the subject of Luther’s conversations is, not infrequently, the attributes of God; for instance, His mercy and love; the duties of the faithful towards God and their moral obligations in whatever state of life they be placed; hints to the clergy on the best way to preach or to instruct the young; not to speak of other observations regarding neighbourly charity, the vices of the age and the virtues or faults of great personages of that day, or of the past. Luther was fond of discoursing on subjects which, in his opinion, would prove profitable to those present, though often his object was merely to enliven and amuse the company.

The tone and the choice of his more serious discourses frequently show us that he was not unmindful of the fact, that his words would be heard by others beyond the narrow circle of his private guests; he was aware that what he said was noted down, and not unfrequently requested the reporters to commit this or that to writing, knowing very well that such notes would circulate.[884] At times, however, he seemed to become forgetful of this, and allowed observations to escape him which caused many of his oldest admirers to regret the publication of the Table-Talk. A large number of statements made by him on the spur of the moment must, moreover, not be taken too seriously, for they are either in contradiction with other utterances or are practically explained away elsewhere.

Thus, for instance, in a conversation in the winter of 1542-1543, occur the following words which really do him honour: “God has preserved the Church by means of the schools; they it is that keep the Church standing. Schools are not very imposing as to their exterior, yet they are of the greatest use. It was to the schools that the little boys owed their knowledge of the Paternoster and the Creed, and the Church has been wonderfully preserved by means of the small schools.”[885]--Yet, at an earlier date, he had said just the contrary, viz. that before his day the young had been allowed to drift to wreck and ruin, owing to entire lack of instruction.

On certain religious subjects he could speak with deep feeling.[886] Compare, for instance, what he says of Christ’s intercourse with His disciples.

“In what a friendly way,” Luther remarks, “did He behave towards His disciples! How charming were all His dealings with them! I quite believe what is related of Peter, viz. that, after Christ’s Ascension, he was always weeping and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief till they grew quite red; when asked the cause of his grief, he replied, he could not help shedding tears when he remembered the friendly intercourse they had had with Christ the Lord. Christ indeed treats us just as He did His disciples, if only we would but believe it; but our eyes are not open to the fact. It was a real wonder how they [the Apostles] were so altered in mind at Pentecost. Ah, the disciples must have been fine fellows to have been witnesses of such things and to have had such fellowship with Christ the Lord!”[887]

Immediately after this, however, we hear him inveighing against the Pope with statements incredibly false,[888] whilst, just before, in another conversation, he had introduced his favourite error concerning Justification by Faith.[889]

It may suffice to keep to the dozen pages or so[890] from which the above kindlier samples were extracted, to become acquainted with the wealth of good interspersed amongst so much that is worthless, and at the same time to appreciate how lively his mind and his powers of observation still remained even when increasing years and persistent bad health were becoming a burden to him.

As to the way in which his then sayings were handed down, we may state, that, in the winter of 1542-1543, Caspar Heydenreich, who had already officiated as pastor of Joachimstal, was present at Luther’s table and wrote down these and other remarks as they dropped from the speaker’s lips; they were afterwards incorporated in Mathesius’ collection. In the original they are partly in Latin, partly in German, and betray not the slightest attempt at polish. The reason that we thus find Latin passages in reports of German conversations is that the reporter, in order to take down more rapidly what he heard, at times made use of shorthand, then only employed for Latin. Others who reported the Table-Talk had recourse to the same device. The consequence is, that, in the recent German editions of the Table-Talk, we find in one and the same conversation some sentences in the Old German Luther actually used, and others in present-day German, the latter being merely translations from the Latin.

After discoursing at length on the fact that schools ought to be carefully cherished for the sake of the coming generation of Church teachers, he says: “The work of the schools is not brilliant in the eyes of the world, but it is of the greatest utility.” (No. 609; then follows the praise of the old schools already recorded.)--“Wealth is the most insignificant thing in the world, the meanest gift in God’s power to bestow on man. What is it compared with the Word of God? Indeed, what is it compared with bodily endowments, or with beauty, or with the gifts of the soul? and yet people fret so much for it. Material, formal, efficient and final causes here fare badly. For this reason the Almighty usually gives riches to rude donkeys upon whom He bestows nothing else” (611).

Luther relates incidentally that his father Hans, who died at Mansfeld in 1530, when asked on his death-bed whether he believed in the Apostles’ Creed, replied: “He would indeed be a scoundrel who refused to believe that.” “That,” aptly remarked Luther, “is a voice from the old world”; whereupon Melanchthon chimed in: “Happy those who die in the knowledge of Christ as did your [daughter] Magdalene [† Sep. 20, 1542]; the older we grow the more foolish we become.... When we grow up we begin to dispute and want to be wise, and yet we are the biggest fools” (615).

According to Luther, God’s most grievous wrath then rested on the Jews. They are blinded, pray fanatically and yet are not heard. “Oh, dear God, rather than remain silent do Thou punish us with pestilence, the French disease and whatever other dreadful maladies the soldiers curse. God says: I have stretched out My hands; come, give ear, draw nigh to Me! [The Jews reply]: We won’t. [God says]: You have Isaias; hear him. [They scream]: Yah, we will kill him! [God says]: Here is My Son! [They reply]: Out on Him! Hence Our Lord God now treats them as we see. That is how abandoned children fare, who refuse to obey their parents and are therefore deserted by them. No one has ever written concerning this wrath of God, nor is anyone able to do so; no eloquence can plumb the depths of this wrath. O Heavenly Father--[this he said with clasped hands]--allow us to enjoy the sunshine and permit us not to fall away from the Word! Just fancy, for fifteen hundred years the Jews have groaned under His Wrath! And what will be the end of it all? Alas, there will be a dreadful scene in hell!” (608).

Against the Jews he was very bitter. It was related at table, that, in spite of the two books Luther had recently published, the Hebrews stood in favour with the Counts of Mansfeld, and, from their synagogue, had even dared to hurl at an Eisleben preacher the opprobrious epithet of Goim. Luther replied that if he were pastor and Court Chaplain there like Cœlius, or even a simple preacher, he would at once resign his post. When it was remarked that the Jews knew how to curry favour with the great, his comment was: “The devil can do much.” On being asked whether it would be right to box the ears of a Jew who uttered a blasphemy, he replied, “Certainly; I for one would smack him on the jaw. Were I able, I would knock him down and stab him in my anger. If it is lawful, according to both the human and the Divine law, to kill a robber, then it is surely even more permissible to slay a blasphemer.” To the observation of one of his guests that the Jews boasted, that, of the two, the Christians were the worse usurers, Luther said: “That is quite true. At Leipzigk there are greater usurers than the Jews. But a distinction must be drawn.” Among the Jews usury is made the rule, whereas amongst the Christians it is repressed. “We preach against it and are heartily opposed to it; with them this is not the case” (628).

In a similar strain, in the dozen pages under consideration, he touches on many other instructive subjects, whether connected with questions of the day, or with religion, or the Bible. He portrays with a clear hand the dominant idea of the Book of Job, in comparison with which all the dramatic force of the Greek plays was as nothing (616); he expounds the narratives of Christ’s Prayer in the Garden of Olives, where He suffered indescribable pains for our sins (626); in answer to a query he speaks of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by Magdalene, and observes, referring to the censure drawn from Judas by his avarice: “That is the way of the world and the devil; what should be blamed is praised, and what should be praised is blamed” (627). What he says of the vast number of the slain, alluded to so frequently in the Old Testament, was probably also called forth by some questioner (612). Amidst this recur new invectives against the Jews and their magic; never ought we to eat or drink with them (619); also against the Turks and their bigotry and unbelief; the latter resembled the fanatics in that, like them, they refused to doubt their revelations; this he proved by certain instances (620). He speaks of the strong faith of simple Christians with feeling and not without envy (614). He extols the power of prayer for others, and proves it not merely from Biblical texts and examples, but also from his own experience; “we, too, prayed Philip back to life. Verily prayer can do much.... God does not reward it with a certain, fixed measure, but with a measure pressed and running over, as He says.... A powerful thing is prayer, if only I could believe it, for God has bound and pledged Himself by it” (617).

Dealing with astrology, he demonstrates its folly by a lengthy and very striking argument; when it was objected that the reformation he was carrying out had also been predicted by the stars at the time of his birth, he replied: “Oh no, that is another matter! That is purely the work of God. You will never persuade me otherwise!” (625).

As to practical questions, he speaks of the doings of the Electoral marriage courts in certain cases (621); of severity in the up-bringing of children (624); of the choice of godparents for Baptism (620); of the authority of guardians in the marriage of their wards (613); and of what was required of those who dispensed the Supper (618).

On one occasion, when the conversion of the Jews at the end of the world was being discussed, the “Doctoress” (Catherine) intervened in the conversation with a Biblical quotation, but her contribution (John x. 16) was rejected in a friendly way by Luther as mistaken.

In these pages of the Table-Talk unseemly speeches or expressions such as call for censure elsewhere do not occur, though the Pope and the Papacy are repeatedly made the butt of misrepresentation and abuse (610, 616, 619); as was only to be expected, we find here again Luther’s favourite assertion that the Roman doctrine of works is a gross error very harmful to souls (623); in support of his opinion Luther gives a long string of Bible texts.

Apart from the abuse just referred to and some other details these few leaves, taken at haphazard from the Table-Talk, are certainly not discreditable to Luther. Beside these might moreover be placed, as we have already admitted elsewhere, many other pages the contents of which are equally unexceptionable.

It is naturally not the task or duty of Catholic controversialists to fill their works with statements from the Table-Talk such as the above; they would nevertheless do well always to bear in mind that many such favourable utterances occur in Luther’s works with which moreover the Protestants are as a rule perfectly familiar. The latter, indeed, who often are acquainted only with these better excerpts from Luther’s books, sermons, letters or Table-Talk, are not unnaturally disposed to view with suspicion those writers who bestow undue prominence on unfavourable portions of his works, torn from their context.

Unless Catholic polemics contrive to look at things from their opponents’ point of view, their success must always be limited; short of this they run the risk of being accused of being ignorant of what tells in Luther’s favour, or of not giving it due weight. All controversy should in reality be conducted in a friendly spirit, and, in the discussion of Luther, such a spirit joined with a broad-minded appreciation of what is good in the opposite party cannot fail to be productive of happy results. How far Protestants have acted in this spirit is, alas, plain to all who have had dealings with them. There can be no question but that certain excesses perpetrated on the opposite side go far to explain, if not to excuse, the methods adopted by some of the champions of Catholicism.

_Kindlier Traits Evinced by Luther._

The great veneration felt for Luther by most of his pupils, particularly by those who were intimate with him, enables us to see the impression his talents made on others. It is, of course, probable that their mental submission to him was in part due to the feeling, that it was an exceptional honour to be accounted friends of a man famous throughout the world and so distinguished by his extraordinary success; yet it is equally certain that it was his own peculiar charm which caused not merely young students, such as those who noted down the Table-Talk, but even mature and experienced men, to look up to him with respect and affection and voluntarily to subject themselves to his mind and his will. The fact is, in Luther a powerful and domineering talent existed side by side with great familiarity in consorting with others and a natural gift of making himself loved. The unshakable confidence in God on which he and his followers seemed to lean in every reverse they met, perhaps impressed people more than anything else.

“His earnestness,” wrote a devoted young follower of his, “is so tempered with gladness and friendliness that one longs to live with him; it seems as though God wished to demonstrate how blissful and joyous his Evangel is, not merely by his teaching, but even by his conduct.” Thus the Swiss student, Johann Kessler, who became acquainted with Luther after his return from the Wartburg.[891] Another voice from the same period enthusiastically extols his friendly ways and his winning speech in his dealings with his pupils, also the power of his words “which cast such a spell over the hearts of his hearers that anyone, who is not made of stone, having once heard him, yearns to hear him again.” Thus his disciple Albert Burrer.[892]

Mathesius, one of his busier pupils, declares: “The man was full of grace and the Holy Ghost. Hence all who sought counsel from him as a prophet of God, found what they desired.”[893] Often, he remarks, difficult questions from Scripture were submitted to him (in conversation at table) which he answered both plainly and concisely. And if anyone contradicted him he took no offence but skilfully put his gainsayer in the wrong. The Doctor knew so well how to bring in his stories and sayings and apply them at the proper juncture that it was a real pleasure and comfort to listen to him.[894] “Amongst his other great virtues he was very easily contented, and also extremely kind.”[895]

Spangenberg, Aurifaber, Cordatus and other pupils were, so to speak, quite under his spell. Hieronymus Weller, whom Luther frequently sought to encourage in his fits of depression, remarked indeed on one occasion that the difference in age, and his reverence for Luther, prevented him from speaking and chatting as confidentially as he would have liked with the great man.[896] On the other hand, the Humanist, Peter Mosellanus, who was at one time much attached to him and never altogether abandoned his cause, says: “In daily life and in his intercourse with others he is polite and friendly; there is nothing stoical or proud about him; he is affable to everyone. In company he converses cheerfully and pleasantly, is lively and gay, always looks merry, cheerful and amiable however hard pressed by his opponents, so that one may well believe he does not act in such weighty matters without God’s assistance.”[897]

Melanchthon, particularly in his early days, as our readers already know, expressed great reverence and devotion for Luther. “You know,” he wrote to Spalatin during his friend’s stay at the Wartburg, “how carefully we must guard this earthen vessel which contains so great a treasure.... The earth holds nothing more divine than him.”[898] After Luther’s death, in spite of the previous misunderstandings, he said of him in a panegyric addressed to the students: “Alas, the chariot of Israel and the horseman thereof, who ruled the Church in these latter years of her existence, has departed.”[899]

Luther was often to prove that the strong impression made by his personality was alone able to gain the day in cases of difficulty, to break down opposition and to ensure the successful carrying out of hardy plans. Seldom indeed did those about him offer any objection, for he possessed that gift, so frequently observed in men of strong character, of exercising, in every matter great or small, a kind of suggestive influence over those who approached him. He possessed an inner, unseen power which seemed to triumph over all, ... even over the claims of truthfulness and logic;[900] besides this, he was gifted with an imposing presence and an uncanny glance. He was by no means curt in his answers, but spoke freely to everyone in a manner calculated to awaken the confidence and unlock the hearts of his hearers. Of his talkativeness he himself once said: “I don’t believe the Emperor [Charles V.] says so much in a year as I do in a day.”[901]

* * * * *

His “disinterestedness which led him to care but little about money and worldly goods”[902] increased the respect felt for him and his work. So little did he care about heaping up riches, that, when scolding the Wittenbergers on account of their avarice, he could say that “though poor, he found more pleasure in what was given him for his needs than the rich and opulent amongst them did in their own possessions.”[903] So entirely was he absorbed in his public controversy that he paid too little attention to his own requirements, particularly in his bachelor days; he even relates how, before he took a wife, he had for a whole year not made his bed, or had it made for him, so that his sweat caused it to rot. “I was so weary, overworked all the day, that I threw myself on the bed and knew nothing about it.”[904] He was never used to excessive comfort or to indulgence in the finer pleasures of the table. In every respect, in conversation and intercourse with others and in domestic life, he was a lover of simplicity. In this he was ever anxious to set a good example to his fellow-workers.

Although he frequently accepted with gratitude presents from the great, yet on occasion he was not above cautioning givers of the danger such gifts involved, when the “eyes of the whole world are upon us.”[905] In 1542, when there was a prospect of his receiving from his friend Amsdorf, the new “bishop” of Naumburg, presents out of the estates of the bishopric, he twice wrote to him to refrain from sending him anything, even a single hare, because “our courtly centaurs [the selfish and rapacious nobles] must be given no pretext for venting their glowing hate against us on the trumped-up charge that we were desirous of securing gain through you.” “They have gulped down everything without compunction, but still would blame us were we to accept a paltry gift of game. Let them feed in God’s or another’s [the devil’s] name, so long as we are not accused of greed.”[906] Döllinger speaks of Luther as “a sympathetic friend, devoid of avarice and greed of money, and a willing helper of others.”[907]

He was always ready to assist the poor with open-handed and kindly liberality, and his friends especially, when in trouble or distress, could reckon on his charity.

When his own means were insufficient he sought by word of mouth or by letter to enlist the sympathy of others, of friends in the town, or even of the Elector himself, in the cause of the indigent. On more than one occasion his good nature was unfairly taken advantage of. This, however, did not prevent his pleading for the poor who flocked to Wittenberg from all quarters and were wont to address themselves to him. Thus, for instance, in 1539 we have a note in which he appealed to certain “dear gentlemen” to save a “pious and scholarly youth” from the “pangs of hunger” by furnishing him with 30 Gulden; he himself was no longer able to afford the gifts he had daily to bestow, though he would be willing, in case of necessity, to contribute half the sum.[908]

Many of the feeble and oppressed experienced his help in the law. He reminds the lawyers how hard it is for the poor to comply with the legal formalities necessary for their protection. On one occasion, when it was a question of the defence of a poor woman, he says: “You know Dr. Martin is not only a theologian and the champion of the faith, but also an advocate of the poor, who troop to him from every place and corner and demand his aid and his intercession with the authorities, so that he would have enough to do even if no other burden rested on his shoulders. But Dr. Martin loves to serve the poor.”[909]

In 1527, when the plague reached Wittenberg, he stayed on in the town with Bugenhagen in order at least to comfort the people by his presence. The University was transferred for the time being to Jena (and then to Schlieben) and the Elector accordingly urged him to migrate to Jena with his wife and family. Luther however insisted on remaining, above all on account of the urgent need of setting an example to his preachers, who were too much preoccupied with the safety of their own families. It was then that he wrote the tract “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (Whether one may flee from death), answering the question in the negative so far as the ministers were concerned. In such dire trouble the flock were more than ever in need of spiritual help; the preachers were to exhort the people to learn diligently from the Word of God how to live and how to die, also, by Confession, reception of the Supper, reconciliation with their neighbours, etc., to “prepare themselves in advance should the Lord knock speedily.”[910] He displayed the same courage during the epidemic of the so-called “English sweat,” a fever which, in 1529, broke out at Wittenberg, and in other German towns, and carried off many victims. Again in 1538 and in 1539 he braved new outbreaks of the plague at Wittenberg. His wish was, that, in such cases, one or two preachers should be specially appointed to look after those stricken with the malady. “Should the lot fall on me,” he says in 1542, “I should not be afraid. I have now been through three pestilences and mixed with some who suffered from it ... and am none the worse.”[911] “God usually protects the ministers of His Word,” he writes in 1538, “if one does not run in and out of the inns and lie in the beds; confessions there is no need to hear, for we bring the Word of Life.”[912] The fact that he could boast of having braved the plague and remained at his post naturally tended to increase his influence with his congregation.[913]

He had passed through a severe mental struggle previous to the epidemic of 1529. Only by dint of despairing efforts was he able to overcome his terrors of conscience concerning his doctrine and his own personal salvation. This inner combat so hardened him that he was fearless where others were terrified and fled. Of his own qualms of conscience he wrote to a friend in April, 1529: If it be an apostolic gift to fight with devils and to lie frequently at the point of death, then he was indeed in this a very Peter or Paul, however much he might lack the other apostolic characters.[914] Here we have the idea of his Divine calling, always most to the front in times of danger, which both strengthens him and enables him to inspire others with a little of his own confidence. “I and Bugenhagen alone remain here,” he wrote during the days of the plague, “but we are not alone, for Christ is with us and will triumph in us and shelter us from Satan, as we hope and trust.”[915]

* * * * *

We already are acquainted with some of his admissions of his own weakness and acknowledgments of the greater gifts and achievements of others--confessions which have been extolled as a proof of his real humility.

“I have no such foolish humility,” so he says, “as to wish to deny the gifts God has bestowed on me. In myself I have indeed enough and more than enough to humble me and teach me that I am nothing. In God, however, we may well pride ourselves, and rejoice and glory in His gifts and extol them, as I myself do on account of my German Psalter; for I studied the Psalter, thanks be to God, with great fruit; but all to the honour and glory of God to Whom be praise for ever and ever.” This he wrote to Eobanus Hessus, the poet, in a high-flown letter thanking him for translating the German Psalter into excellent Latin.[916] Of his own virtues or sinfulness he preferred to speak humorously, as his manner was. Thus, he says, for instance, in 1526, in his suppressed “Widder den Radschlag der Meintzischen Pfafferey,” that “he had not defiled any man’s wife or child,” “had not robbed anyone of his goods ... nor murdered or assaulted anyone or given help or counsel thereto”; his sin consisted in “not pulling a long face but in insisting on being merry”; also in eating meat on forbidden days. People might defame his life, but he was not going to heed “the dirty hogsnouts.”[917]

His statements belittling his own powers and achievements, coming from a man whose apparently overmastering self-confidence had, from the beginning, prepossessed so many of his followers in his favour, afford a subject for psychological study. He seems the more ready to give full play to his confidence the more he feels his weakness face to face with the menace of danger, and the more he experiences in the depths of his soul the raging of doubts which he attributes to the devil.

In the humble admissions he makes he never conceals how much he stands in need of assistance. He does not hide from himself the fact that he dreads outward troubles, and is deficient in strong and exalted virtue. But side by side with his faults, he is fond of gazing on and extolling God’s gifts in his person. His peculiar form of humility, his prayer and his trust in God find expression in certain utterances and experiences, on which no judgment can be passed until we have before us a larger selection of them, particularly of such as seem to be less premeditated.

_Prayer and Confidence in God._

Luther’s strangely undaunted confidence and the personal nature of his reliance on God’s help form part of his mental physiognomy.

He sees around him much distress and corruption and exclaims: “Alas, we are living outwardly under the empire of the devil, hence we can neither see nor hear anything good from without.” And yet, he proceeds in his usual forced tone, “inwardly we are living in the kingdom of Christ, where we behold God’s glory and His grace! For of Christ it is said: ‘Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.’” “Hatred is our reward in this world.” “Our reward is excessive considering the insignificance of the service we render Christ. But what is the world, its anger, or its prince? A smoke that vanishes, a bubble that bursts, such is everything that is opposed to the Lord Whom we serve and Who works in us.” With these words, so expressive of his determination, he directs his trusted pupil, Conrad Cordatus, to enter courageously upon the office of preacher at Stendal in the March.[918]

Again and again he seeks to reanimate his faith and confidence by calling to mind not merely God’s faithfulness to His promises, but also his own personal “sufferings” and “temptations,” the only escape from which, as he believed, lay in the most obstinate and presumptuous belief in his cause, and in the conviction that God was constantly intervening in his favour.